Ray Gadke, oversaw microforms and periodicals at University of Chicago library, dies

John Zich / University of Chicago

University of Chicago librarian Ray Gadke.

University of Chicago librarian Ray Gadke. (John Zich / University of Chicago)

Bob GoldsboroughChicago Tribune

Raymond Gadke assisted several generations of researchers and students in his oversight of University of Chicago Library’s microforms department and later of its periodical collections and all its reading room collections.

A scholar himself who had a master’s degree in history from the U. of C., Gadke was known for his own intellectual curiosity and for his willingness to help anyone seeking assistance with the university’s vast collections.

“If anyone aspired to be a perpetual college student, Ray pulled it off,” said Steven R. Strahler, a University of Chicago graduate and longtime friend. “He was a scholar who sought no recognition or remuneration while helping hundreds of students pursue their studies and goals.”

Gadke, 74, died of cardiovascular disease brought on by stomach flu Feb. 26 at his home, said his brother, Richard. He had been a longtime resident of the South Side Hyde Park neighborhood.

Gadke grew up on a farm in then-rural Long Grove. He graduated in 1961 from Ela-Vernon High School — now Lake Zurich High School — where he developed the nickname “Father Ray,” owing to his nurturing, paternal nature. During high school, Gadke was interested in history, and he also became fluent in German and studied Latin.

After high school, Gadke earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1965 from Knox College in Galesburg, where he helped support himself by working in the college’s kitchen. He then earned a master’s degree in history at the U. of C. in 1966 and then began to pursue a doctorate in history.

In 1969, Gadke joined the university’s library staff. When the Regenstein Library opened in the early 1970s, Gadke took over the microforms department. Gadke later added other area of oversight, including the library’s periodicals and, ultimately, all of the library’s reading room collections, which encompass the periodical reading room, the reference collections throughout the library and microforms.

River Forest author and U. of C. alum John Binder met Gadke in the late 1970s while working on his doctoral dissertation and reading microfilm.

“I remember him as being very intelligent, well-grounded, helping and compassionate,” Binder said. “He was helpful to library users and a mentor to various students who worked under him in the library in internships and part-time jobs. Ray was one of those guys who exhibited the finest of the University of Chicago.”

Craig Kennedy, a U. of C. alum who now is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, worked in the library during college but not directly with Gadke. However, he called Gadke “one of the two reasons that I got through the University of Chicago.”

“He was one of these incredibly supportive guys who are able to identify kids who might have been over their head at Chicago, especially a farm kid like me,” Kennedy said. “He was just an incredible support, and he was generous.”

“It sounds kind of hokey, but his true calling was helping other people, everybody who came his way,” McGree said.

In 2015, the university established an internship in Gadke’s name, as a way to help offer undergraduate students paid experience in a chosen field. David Bottorff, the library’s head of collection management and circulation, called Gadke “a consistently kind and generous soul, whether as a colleague, a mentor to his student employees or to the countless library patrons he assisted over the decades. His warmth, humor and compassion, as well as his intellectual curiosity and dedication, will be sorely missed.”

Gadke, who was known for his colorful collection of Hawaiian shirts, never retired.

“He basically spent from whatever time he was there in the morning until after 9 o’clock at night at the library,” Richard Gadke said. “That’s where his friends were. That’s where his life was.”

Gadke began collecting in the 1980s religious statues, after Catholic priests whom he had met in his graduate studies began giving him artifacts from Catholic churches or schools that were closing. Gadke’s collection filled two rooms in his apartment.

Gadke frequently trekked out to visit his brother’s Boone County farm on weekends.

“He liked to come out and help run the farm, and he was well-liked out here, too,” Richard Gadke said. “He fit right in. Whether it was college professors in Chicago or simple farm folks out here in rural Boone County, he fit right in.”